@Mistlin said:
Nobody is disputing that there would be no hall without the players. What apparently is up to dispute is the voters determine who gets into the hall - not the players. I am not sure why this needs to be spelled out, but apparently it does.
You think that grudges by writers are something new? Are you serious? Or just naive?
I never claimed that younger fans do not care about baseball - it was your comment:
" Omissions only hurt the HOFs legitimacy who a growing number of younger fans are caring less and less about every year."
You claimed that the HoF and its members somehow have an effect on younger fans embracing the sport. They're tuning out of games because it is a boring watch - just look at all the pace of play changes imposed recently.
When the hall and its voters turned their backs on the very players which saved the sport and left a glaring hole representing an entire era of baseball, the hall stopped being a complete museum of the sport.
P.S. insurrectionists have no place in the hall.
Did you just learn that word or did you hear it about a million times on your favorite show like the SPEW or sorry the VIEW
@Mistlin said:
Any museum without an inclusive history of what it claims to be (in this case, MLB's Hall of Fame being a complete story of the best to ever play the game) is a fraudulent enterprise.
I'm interested in why you think the MLB HOF claims to be what you say they claim to be. 'Cause they make no such claim.
The HOF's mission is "to preserve the sport's history, honor excellence within the game and make a connection between the generations of people who enjoy baseball." To consider the exclusion of Punkinhead from the HOF to be "fraudulent", one must consider what he did to fall under the category of "excellence" worth honoring. Rosie Ruiz is not in the marathon HOF (if such exists) and Punkinhead isn't in the MLB HOF for the same reason. What Rosie and Punkinhead did wasn't "excellence", it was "cheating".
As for the other parts of their mission, that Punkinhead fraudulently wiped away the records of honorable men is preserved in the HOF, and people who enjoy baseball have no interest in Punkinhead beyond his historical infamy, so I think the HOF has done exactly what they set out to do.
this is my first time reading this thread. i just think that if the PED players like bonds and mcgwire are not in the hall of fame then why is bud selig in the hall of fame. he was the one in charge of baseball and could have put a stop to all of the steriod use but he just let it ruin all of the baseball in the nineties.
MLB's Hall of 'fame' without Rose, Clemens, McGwire, or Bonds is a farce.
When your sports all-time hits and home run leaders aren't inducted, then you're doing something wrong. People wonder why the sport is dying?
People hate hypocrisy.
Football emerged as the most popular sport in the 1970s because they EMBRACED gambling (Jimmy 'the Greek' being a featured, national network sports personality giving odds) while baseball attempted to run away from it. The NFL knew what people wanted and it gave it to them.
@Basebal21 said:
Sport isnt dying, just the legitimacy of the HOF. Only the NFL makes more money as a single league and college baseball is gaining a ton of popularity
Baseball isn't dying? Why, then, are they implementing all of these radical rule changes? Pitch clocks. Extra-inning baserunners. Banning of extreme shifts. Limiting mound visits and pitching changes.
In just 15 years, attendance has dropped by over 7 million per year. Other sports, on the other hand, are seeing surging attendance.
@Basebal21 said:
Sport isnt dying, just the legitimacy of the HOF. Only the NFL makes more money as a single league and college baseball is gaining a ton of popularity
Baseball isn't dying? Why, then, are they implementing all of these radical rule changes? Pitch clocks. Extra-inning baserunners. Banning of extreme shifts. Limiting mound visits and pitching changes.
In just 15 years, attendance has dropped by over 7 million per year. Other sports, on the other hand, are seeing surging attendance.
The rule changes are mostly to get more ad revenue. A 3 hour game shortened to 230 add 15 minutes of commercials and say the game is 15 minutes faster.
Attendance isnt an issue because of the game of baseball. College attendance is strong and growing, more than one college team had an average higher attendance than a MLB team. That should never happen
The cost of attending an MLB game is the issue for in person attendance. Parking is absurdly expensive, beers drinks food etc are going to be about 10 dollars each. By the time you leave youve spent close to 100 bucks if not more even with a cheap ticket.
A hot dog shouldnt cost 6 dollars, parking shouldnt be 20 or more, light beers shouldnt be 6 dollars or more making bars look cheap
The rule changes are mostly to get more ad revenue. A 3 hour game shortened to 230 add 15 minutes of commercials and say the game is 15 minutes faster.
Attendance isnt an issue because of the game of baseball. College attendance is strong and growing, more than one college team had an average higher attendance than a MLB team. That should never happen
The cost of attending an MLB game is the issue for in person attendance. Parking is absurdly expensive, beers drinks food etc are going to be about 10 dollars each. By the time you leave youve spent close to 100 bucks if not more even with a cheap ticket.
A hot dog shouldnt cost 6 dollars, parking shouldnt be 20 or more, light beers shouldnt be 6 dollars or more making bars look cheap
If you believe 'ad revenue' and not 'desperation' is the cause of the rule changes, then there's not much to help you see the truth.
If your model is college baseball, then it sounds like you're in favor of cutting the regular season in half. Oh wait, what about that ad revenue you said was the sole reason for the rule changes?
Cost has nothing to do with attendance. The costs are calculated to maximize the dollars spent of everyone in attendance and no one is forcing you to buy food and drink while at the game. If you can't go three hours without stuffing your face (because to you it's too expensive) then you have bigger problems than the cost of concessions at the game.
A hot dog shouldn't be $6? Parking shouldn't be $20? Beers shouldn't be $6?
Why not? People line up to pay these prices - again, these costs aren't just thrown out there without research. I would suspect you're a free-market capitalist. Why do you want to artificially restrict prices?
Baseball is a dying sport. Want proof? Look at the difference in how the entire world followed Sosa and McGwire in 1998 compared to how it's receiving Judge and Ohtani. Judge already at 51 HR, Ohtani on pace for the first ever 50/50 campaign, and no one outside of die hard baseball fans even know, let alone care.
MLB and their gate-keeping fans are to blame. Turning their backs on the players who saved their sport and turned them into outcasts turned off an entire generation of fans, who in turned raised their kids without any interest in baseball.
The rule changes are mostly to get more ad revenue. A 3 hour game shortened to 230 add 15 minutes of commercials and say the game is 15 minutes faster.
Attendance isnt an issue because of the game of baseball. College attendance is strong and growing, more than one college team had an average higher attendance than a MLB team. That should never happen
The cost of attending an MLB game is the issue for in person attendance. Parking is absurdly expensive, beers drinks food etc are going to be about 10 dollars each. By the time you leave youve spent close to 100 bucks if not more even with a cheap ticket.
A hot dog shouldnt cost 6 dollars, parking shouldnt be 20 or more, light beers shouldnt be 6 dollars or more making bars look cheap
If you believe 'ad revenue' and not 'desperation' is the cause of the rule changes, then there's not much to help you see the truth.
If your model is college baseball, then it sounds like you're in favor of cutting the regular season in half. Oh wait, what about that ad revenue you said was the sole reason for the rule changes?
Cost has nothing to do with attendance. The costs are calculated to maximize the dollars spent of everyone in attendance and no one is forcing you to buy food and drink while at the game. If you can't go three hours without stuffing your face (because to you it's too expensive) then you have bigger problems than the cost of concessions at the game.
A hot dog shouldn't be $6? Parking shouldn't be $20? Beers shouldn't be $6?
Why not? People line up to pay these prices - again, these costs aren't just thrown out there without research. I would suspect you're a free-market capitalist. Why do you want to artificially restrict prices?
Baseball is a dying sport. Want proof? Look at the difference in how the entire world followed Sosa and McGwire in 1998 compared to how it's receiving Judge and Ohtani. Judge already at 51 HR, Ohtani on pace for the first ever 50/50 campaign, and no one outside of die hard baseball fans even know, let alone care.
MLB and their gate-keeping fans are to blame. Turning their backs on the players who saved their sport and turned them into outcasts turned off an entire generation of fans, who in turned raised their kids without any interest in baseball.
Ad revenue is what is driving it and all the evidence shows it. If the game time is reduced by 30 minutes from the pitch clock then the total time to watch should;d be reduced by 30 minutes but its not. Its being reduced by 15 to 20 minutes with more commercials being put in. They was no reason other than more ads to move the pitch clock from 20 to 17 seconds. The dirty secret too is that the bases were expanded so they can charge more when ads are put on them in a couple years. They were just smart enough not to immediately do it
If you believe cost has nothing to do with attendance I really dont know what to tell you. People cant do things they cant afford. The majority of people dont have the money to go to more than a couple games a year. I dont want to artificially restrict prices, but the sport is not the problem when it decides to price people out. Its not shocking that people dont want to pay astronomical prices to go watch bad teams.
Baseball isnt even close to a dying sport. College is setting record numbers, and its flourishing around the world. MLB has three major issues. The first is that the owners have spent the last couple years telling us how the sport sucks and needs to be changed and making a ton of changes way to fast. The second is theyve priced a lot of people out of going to games.
The biggest issue by far though is just the current group of owners. Only a handful of them actually want to win and care about it. Another handful just want to be good enough to make the playoffs. The rest couldnt care less as long as theyre making boatloads of money which they all are. Theres too many As/Pirates/Tampa/Miami/White Sox/Cleveland etc owners that wont spend money and just trade 90+ percent of their good players away whenever they get expensive. They also keep their best prospects in the minors to manipulate their service time instead of having the best product on the field.
No one wants to go watch the White Sox win 40 games, or the Pirates fight for last place again (other than when Skenes pitches). Sports fans dont go to games when the product is bad and show up when the team is winning. Its not a baseball problem, its just one of the worst collective group of owners MLB has ever had and thats saying a lot. Its quite impressive considering the records college baseball has been setting for attendance and viewership as well as many foreign leagues.
And yes MLB is really bad at promoting players and has really bad social media policies. MLB and NHL sports writers are probably the worst at sitting on soap boxes and acting like theyre morally superior to everyone which certainly doesnt help. In the end that just hurts the HOF not baseball
I care far more about the service time manipulation of Skenes and Dylan Crews than whether or not the HOF exists and who some sports writers think should be in it
I hate having to agree with BB21 here because I don’t think he’s intentionally correct here. Here’s the same information with data to back it up and minus the random owners need to spend more or there’s no small market nonsense.
Bless your hart. Its truly sad what youre doing whether youre an alt or just following someone around.
There are no small market teams, the data shows it. Not sure how any owner could be random or ignoring teams that just pocket money and dont spend on players
@Basebal21 said:
Bless your hart. Its truly sad what youre doing whether youre an alt or just following someone around.
There are no small market teams, the data shows it. Not sure how any owner could be random or ignoring teams that just pocket money and dont spend on players
If you take all of the media revenues for all of the teams and calculate the standard deviations of each teams revenue from the mean I would argue, with reason, that teams more than a single standard deviation above the mean are large market, teams more than a single standard deviation below the mean are small market, and those in the blob are just teams.
MLB teams are setup as corporations and are not held as assets. These corporations, or rather the directors who operate them, are legally responsible to their shareholders “best interests”. This is the wording from our Supreme Court. This doesn’t necessarily mean maximizing profit, but it certainly doesn’t mean taking on debt from a majority owner to pay for payroll.
I’m not going to run away just because you’re loud and wrong about a particular issue. That in the age of the internet, with such a vast sea of information I can still find people who _ choose_ ignorance. I love it. That you also continually promote this theory that anyone who disagrees with your bizarre theories is using an alt account is another humorous element - just another thing you’re wrong about.
Ad revenue is what is driving it and all the evidence shows it. If the game time is reduced by 30 minutes from the pitch clock then the total time to watch should;d be reduced by 30 minutes but its not. Its being reduced by 15 to 20 minutes with more commercials being put in. They was no reason other than more ads to move the pitch clock from 20 to 17 seconds. The dirty secret too is that the bases were expanded so they can charge more when ads are put on them in a couple years. They were just smart enough not to immediately do it
If you believe cost has nothing to do with attendance I really dont know what to tell you. People cant do things they cant afford. The majority of people dont have the money to go to more than a couple games a year. I dont want to artificially restrict prices, but the sport is not the problem when it decides to price people out. Its not shocking that people dont want to pay astronomical prices to go watch bad teams.
Baseball isnt even close to a dying sport. College is setting record numbers, and its flourishing around the world. MLB has three major issues. The first is that the owners have spent the last couple years telling us how the sport sucks and needs to be changed and making a ton of changes way to fast. The second is theyve priced a lot of people out of going to games.
The biggest issue by far though is just the current group of owners. Only a handful of them actually want to win and care about it. Another handful just want to be good enough to make the playoffs. The rest couldnt care less as long as theyre making boatloads of money which they all are. Theres too many As/Pirates/Tampa/Miami/White Sox/Cleveland etc owners that wont spend money and just trade 90+ percent of their good players away whenever they get expensive. They also keep their best prospects in the minors to manipulate their service time instead of having the best product on the field.
No one wants to go watch the White Sox win 40 games, or the Pirates fight for last place again (other than when Skenes pitches). Sports fans dont go to games when the product is bad and show up when the team is winning. Its not a baseball problem, its just one of the worst collective group of owners MLB has ever had and thats saying a lot. Its quite impressive considering the records college baseball has been setting for attendance and viewership as well as many foreign leagues.
And yes MLB is really bad at promoting players and has really bad social media policies. MLB and NHL sports writers are probably the worst at sitting on soap boxes and acting like theyre morally superior to everyone which certainly doesnt help. In the end that just hurts the HOF not baseball
I care far more about the service time manipulation of Skenes and Dylan Crews than whether or not the HOF exists and who some sports writers think should be in it
A lot of words being typed, but no data to back it up.
The time between innings was not changed - it's still two minutes. This verifiable fact shoots your 'ad revenue driving change' theory to bits. There are not more ads being shown - it is all in your head.
Regarding cost. I can get tickets for today's Phillies game against the Astros (Phillies have the best record in baseball, Astros leading the AL West) for $35 a pop. You don't need to pay for parking - mass transit drops you off and about a 5-minute walk gets you to the park.
You then say no one wants to pay high prices to watch bad teams. Are you saying people will pay astronomical prices to watch good teams? I just showed you can watch two of the best teams in the league for $35 a pop. Again, another nonsensical argument.
College baseball is 'flourishing' around the world? Baseball was not even in the most recent Olympics, again, another nonsense argument not based in reality. If college baseball (or even baseball as a whole) was 'flourishing around the world' it would have been in the Olympics.
Every sport has teams who tank on purpose. If a team is not good enough to make the playoffs, the best thing to do is to bottom out to maximize draft picks. That's the system in play. Don't blame teams for playing by the rules. Make MLB adopt draft rules like the NBA where draft order is not guaranteed.
You keep repeating these claims about college and foreign leagues, but you have no data whatsoever to back it up. When is college baseball ever a featured presentation, outside of the college world series? The only reason it gets any traction then is due to the doldrums of summer when its meaningless MLB games and NOTHING ELSE ON. There's no NFL. There's no NBA. There's no NHL. That's the reason people watch the college world series - there's nothing else to see.
You have, in your own convoluted way, agreed with me that baseball is dying.
"ad revenue" is certainly driving increased revenue for MLB teams - all MLB teams either directly, or as part of local revenue sharing.
The number of ads isn't increasing but the cost is... and that is because.... as the sport dies (every business owner wants this kind of death) viewership is up across all segments and fan attendance was back above 70M in 2023, and fan-engagement is at an all-time high for MLB. We will have to wait to see whether that holds, but I don't see anything that I would consider to indicate the sport is dying. Personally I don't care if MLB is the national past-time, niche, or anywhere in between.
Ad revenue is what is driving it and all the evidence shows it. If the game time is reduced by 30 minutes from the pitch clock then the total time to watch should;d be reduced by 30 minutes but its not. Its being reduced by 15 to 20 minutes with more commercials being put in. They was no reason other than more ads to move the pitch clock from 20 to 17 seconds. The dirty secret too is that the bases were expanded so they can charge more when ads are put on them in a couple years. They were just smart enough not to immediately do it
If you believe cost has nothing to do with attendance I really dont know what to tell you. People cant do things they cant afford. The majority of people dont have the money to go to more than a couple games a year. I dont want to artificially restrict prices, but the sport is not the problem when it decides to price people out. Its not shocking that people dont want to pay astronomical prices to go watch bad teams.
Baseball isnt even close to a dying sport. College is setting record numbers, and its flourishing around the world. MLB has three major issues. The first is that the owners have spent the last couple years telling us how the sport sucks and needs to be changed and making a ton of changes way to fast. The second is theyve priced a lot of people out of going to games.
The biggest issue by far though is just the current group of owners. Only a handful of them actually want to win and care about it. Another handful just want to be good enough to make the playoffs. The rest couldnt care less as long as theyre making boatloads of money which they all are. Theres too many As/Pirates/Tampa/Miami/White Sox/Cleveland etc owners that wont spend money and just trade 90+ percent of their good players away whenever they get expensive. They also keep their best prospects in the minors to manipulate their service time instead of having the best product on the field.
No one wants to go watch the White Sox win 40 games, or the Pirates fight for last place again (other than when Skenes pitches). Sports fans dont go to games when the product is bad and show up when the team is winning. Its not a baseball problem, its just one of the worst collective group of owners MLB has ever had and thats saying a lot. Its quite impressive considering the records college baseball has been setting for attendance and viewership as well as many foreign leagues.
And yes MLB is really bad at promoting players and has really bad social media policies. MLB and NHL sports writers are probably the worst at sitting on soap boxes and acting like theyre morally superior to everyone which certainly doesnt help. In the end that just hurts the HOF not baseball
I care far more about the service time manipulation of Skenes and Dylan Crews than whether or not the HOF exists and who some sports writers think should be in it
A lot of words being typed, but no data to back it up.
The time between innings was not changed - it's still two minutes. This verifiable fact shoots your 'ad revenue driving change' theory to bits. There are not more ads being shown - it is all in your head.
Regarding cost. I can get tickets for today's Phillies game against the Astros (Phillies have the best record in baseball, Astros leading the AL West) for $35 a pop. You don't need to pay for parking - mass transit drops you off and about a 5-minute walk gets you to the park.
You then say no one wants to pay high prices to watch bad teams. Are you saying people will pay astronomical prices to watch good teams? I just showed you can watch two of the best teams in the league for $35 a pop. Again, another nonsensical argument.
College baseball is 'flourishing' around the world? Baseball was not even in the most recent Olympics, again, another nonsense argument not based in reality. If college baseball (or even baseball as a whole) was 'flourishing around the world' it would have been in the Olympics.
Every sport has teams who tank on purpose. If a team is not good enough to make the playoffs, the best thing to do is to bottom out to maximize draft picks. That's the system in play. Don't blame teams for playing by the rules. Make MLB adopt draft rules like the NBA where draft order is not guaranteed.
You keep repeating these claims about college and foreign leagues, but you have no data whatsoever to back it up. When is college baseball ever a featured presentation, outside of the college world series? The only reason it gets any traction then is due to the doldrums of summer when its meaningless MLB games and NOTHING ELSE ON. There's no NFL. There's no NBA. There's no NHL. That's the reason people watch the college world series - there's nothing else to see.
You have, in your own convoluted way, agreed with me that baseball is dying.
Thanks!
Your example is 35 dollars for a ticket with I guess free public transit that most places charge for and then youre going to sit at the game and not eat or drink a single thing the entire time? Even if you just have a water and hot dog youre at almost 50 bucks for a single person ignoring cost and time of the public transit.
There is data that supports that the time it takes to watch a game is not decreasing at the same rate of the game time. Theres also tons of data about college and foreign leagues. College set attendance records last year as one example.
Baseball wasnt in the Olympics because France was the host country. They didnt want to build fields and wanted break dancing and swimmers to get sick in their river. Its back next year and who really cares anyways. Theres already the WBC which the players actually care about. Baseball and football aren't really good Olympic sports anyways
Theres far far far more college baseball on TV than just the college world series. You can even watch Japanese, South Korean and Mexican games on TV now
@coolstanley said:
I rarely ever see college baseball on tv..
Its not on the first couple weeks other than weird invitational tournaments like Ole Miss playing in a tournament against Minnesota in the Vikings Stadium. The games start getting picked up a lot as the seasons go on. SEC, ACC, Big 12 networks have a bunch of them (softball as well) the B!G network has some as well just not as much as that conference doesnt really care about baseball.
I wont pay for the + networks but you can watch basically any game you want on the + networks. Once it gets closer to conference time you start seeing some of the games moving off the conference channels to the major networks carrying a lot more of them. They would carry the big games before that time but it really picks up then
Theres been a dramatic increase in coverage over the last couple years
I would like to see the data that shows that the duration of a game is decreasing faster than the duration of the presentation of the game.
I looked at some numbers and the assertion that game-time is decreasing slower than game-length. This left me unable to look at why this was happening - because it's not.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the commercial time between 1984 and 2024 is within 3% with 2024 being longer on average. You might wonder why as the time between inning is unchanged... There are a few factors which nudge it, but the big one is pitchers per game which has increased from 2.6 to 4.2. There's more pitches per AB and fewer PH per G and some other needles move. There are a few more ads when there's a pitching change, but these are dead-air ads which don't really impact revenue so that angle is likely moot. Either way, bring forth the data!
@coolstanley said:
I rarely ever see college baseball on tv..
Its not on the first couple weeks other than weird invitational tournaments like Ole Miss playing in a tournament against Minnesota in the Vikings Stadium. The games start getting picked up a lot as the seasons go on. SEC, ACC, Big 12 networks have a bunch of them (softball as well) the B!G network has some as well just not as much as that conference doesnt really care about baseball.
I wont pay for the + networks but you can watch basically any game you want on the + networks. Once it gets closer to conference time you start seeing some of the games moving off the conference channels to the major networks carrying a lot more of them. They would carry the big games before that time but it really picks up then
Theres been a dramatic increase in coverage over the last couple years
I know the conference networks has games. But I rarely see any games on the major networks. Its not a popular sport compared to college football or basketball.
@coolstanley said:
I rarely ever see college baseball on tv..
Its not on the first couple weeks other than weird invitational tournaments like Ole Miss playing in a tournament against Minnesota in the Vikings Stadium. The games start getting picked up a lot as the seasons go on. SEC, ACC, Big 12 networks have a bunch of them (softball as well) the B!G network has some as well just not as much as that conference doesnt really care about baseball.
I wont pay for the + networks but you can watch basically any game you want on the + networks. Once it gets closer to conference time you start seeing some of the games moving off the conference channels to the major networks carrying a lot more of them. They would carry the big games before that time but it really picks up then
Theres been a dramatic increase in coverage over the last couple years
I know the conference networks has games. But I rarely see any games on the major networks. Its not a popular sport compared to college football or basketball.
College football is certainly king for college sports with revenue. A growing number of baseball programs are making money though and you even have a bunch like LSU and Florida who spent over 200 million on their baseball facilities. The big programs the facilities are a lot nicer than anything in the minor leagues. Its never going to catch football having more games but its been growing quickly over the last decade. A decade ago you could really only watch the CWS and now weekday non conference games can even be seen. The conference tournaments have been getting on bigger and bigger channels the last couple years as well
If the argument is all of the changes MLB is instituting is simply to add additional revenue via more commercials, please explain:
The commercial time outs between innings is unchanged, meaning there is no additional commercial time being added;
and, the rule change forcing pitchers to face at least three batters or get to the end of an inning means fewer pitching changes (which would have been additional commercial time).
You do not need to look at game time length to see that there is actually less commercial time now with the rule changes.
Regarding college baseball, again, the only reason their world series gets any airtime is when it's played - there is literally no competition for eyeballs.
As far as the Olympics go? It was removed from rotation in 2008. It only came back for 2021 as part of multiple sports Japan requested to be added. France has plenty of international quality fields to handle the Olympics, but again, baseball does not have this huge international draw you claim it to be.
While France has a low level pro baseball league it would have looked like baseball being played on high school fields. They didnt want to upgrade stadiums.. The Olympics time is about as bad as it can get for baseball. The pros are in the middle of the season, the draft has already happened, and most of the top college guys will say no playing in the summer leagues
If you want to ignore the growing popularity and the massive growth of college and others you can.
@Basebal21 said:
While France has a low level pro baseball league it would have looked like baseball being played on high school fields. They didnt want to upgrade stadiums.. The Olympics time is about as bad as it can get for baseball. The pros are in the middle of the season, the draft has already happened, and most of the top college guys will say no playing in the summer leagues
If you want to ignore the growing popularity and the massive growth of college and others you can.
Why in the world would they 'upgrade stadiums' when they already have plenty that are international-level worthy? High school fields? You don't even know what you're talking about yet here you are, spouting provably false lies.
Again, if baseball is this growing, world-wide phenomenon, why has it been excluded from every Olympics since 2008 (with the exception of 2021 when it was added as a one-off with 4 other sports)?
Face it. Baseball is an extremely regional sport that is losing fans at a record clip. Basketball was already infinitely more popular overseas and has overtaken MLB in terms of engagement and popularity.
@Basebal21 said:
While France has a low level pro baseball league it would have looked like baseball being played on high school fields. They didnt want to upgrade stadiums.. The Olympics time is about as bad as it can get for baseball. The pros are in the middle of the season, the draft has already happened, and most of the top college guys will say no playing in the summer leagues
If you want to ignore the growing popularity and the massive growth of college and others you can.
Why in the world would they 'upgrade stadiums' when they already have plenty that are international-level worthy? High school fields? You don't even know what you're talking about yet here you are, spouting provably false lies.
Again, if baseball is this growing, world-wide phenomenon, why has it been excluded from every Olympics since 2008 (with the exception of 2021 when it was added as a one-off with 4 other sports)?
Face it. Baseball is an extremely regional sport that is losing fans at a record clip. Basketball was already infinitely more popular overseas and has overtaken MLB in terms of engagement and popularity.
France doesnt have baseball stadiums that would come anywhere close to what is needed for an Olympics. Theres high school stadiums that are better than them.
They have soccer stadiums but not every one of them has the dimensions that can happen. When the Yankees and Red Sox played in London it took over 3 weeks to get the stadium ready for it and the playing surfaces have to be entirely changed out. The major Euro soccer leagues dont allow anyone else to play on their game day surfaces.
The fact that France, Germany and Australia even have professional leagues shows the growth of the game. The Australian league even gets some minor league MLB players but they have limits on foreign players in the league
The Olympics arent the threshold of the popularity of a sport anyways. The WBC is what the best players actually care about and even that doesnt get the all of the best that could be there.
Theres nothing regional about a sport wildly popular in the Western Hemisphere and Asia. Africa and the Middle East baseball still struggles with but it is growing in Europe, Soccer will always be king there though
France doesnt have baseball stadiums that would come anywhere close to what is needed for an Olympics. Theres high school stadiums that are better than them.
They have soccer stadiums but not every one of them has the dimensions that can happen. When the Yankees and Red Sox played in London it took over 3 weeks to get the stadium ready for it and the playing surfaces have to be entirely changed out. The major Euro soccer leagues dont allow anyone else to play on their game day surfaces.
The fact that France, Germany and Australia even have professional leagues shows the growth of the game. The Australian league even gets some minor league MLB players but they have limits on foreign players in the league
The Olympics arent the threshold of the popularity of a sport anyways. The WBC is what the best players actually care about and even that doesnt get the all of the best that could be there.
Theres nothing regional about a sport wildly popular in the Western Hemisphere and Asia. Africa and the Middle East baseball still struggles with but it is growing in Europe, Soccer will always be king there though
You continue to push this narrative about France supposedly lacking the facilities to host Olympic baseball. That simply isn't true, and even a cursory search would prove you wrong. There have been more Summer Olympics held in history without baseball than with, and it has nothing to do with facilities (or lack thereof). No, there are not high school baseball stadiums better, either.
Again, they do not need to alter soccer stadiums to fit in baseball games - they already have the facilities to host international competitions.
The numbers are the numbers - baseball is a dying sport, no matter how much you rail against it, its best days are long behind it.
I want to see pictures of the french stadiums... I'm betting they are shaped like croissants. I didn't know much about stadiums in france so I asked someone I know who lives in Paris... That said, I have a feeling this train has more track...
France doesnt have baseball stadiums that would come anywhere close to what is needed for an Olympics. Theres high school stadiums that are better than them.
They have soccer stadiums but not every one of them has the dimensions that can happen. When the Yankees and Red Sox played in London it took over 3 weeks to get the stadium ready for it and the playing surfaces have to be entirely changed out. The major Euro soccer leagues dont allow anyone else to play on their game day surfaces.
The fact that France, Germany and Australia even have professional leagues shows the growth of the game. The Australian league even gets some minor league MLB players but they have limits on foreign players in the league
The Olympics arent the threshold of the popularity of a sport anyways. The WBC is what the best players actually care about and even that doesnt get the all of the best that could be there.
Theres nothing regional about a sport wildly popular in the Western Hemisphere and Asia. Africa and the Middle East baseball still struggles with but it is growing in Europe, Soccer will always be king there though
You continue to push this narrative about France supposedly lacking the facilities to host Olympic baseball. That simply isn't true, and even a cursory search would prove you wrong. There have been more Summer Olympics held in history without baseball than with, and it has nothing to do with facilities (or lack thereof). No, there are not high school baseball stadiums better, either.
Again, they do not need to alter soccer stadiums to fit in baseball games - they already have the facilities to host international competitions.
The numbers are the numbers - baseball is a dying sport, no matter how much you rail against it, its best days are long behind it.
Youre hyper focusing on the Olympics, they dont matter, they never have for baseball and almost certainly never will. Its not a sport where you can shut down the season for 3 weeks in August to go have an Olympics.
If you dont like the rule changes thats one thing, I dont like a lot of the MLB rule changes either. Everything points to baseball growing and flourishing and the Olympics dont matter one bit. Baseball already has its own Olympics. You arent going to know who any of the players are when it comes back next time, it will be minor league guys at best
Comments
Did you just learn that word or did you hear it about a million times on your favorite show like the SPEW or sorry the VIEW
this is my first time reading this thread. i just think that if the PED players like bonds and mcgwire are not in the hall of fame then why is bud selig in the hall of fame. he was the one in charge of baseball and could have put a stop to all of the steriod use but he just let it ruin all of the baseball in the nineties.
MLB's Hall of 'fame' without Rose, Clemens, McGwire, or Bonds is a farce.
When your sports all-time hits and home run leaders aren't inducted, then you're doing something wrong. People wonder why the sport is dying?
People hate hypocrisy.
Football emerged as the most popular sport in the 1970s because they EMBRACED gambling (Jimmy 'the Greek' being a featured, national network sports personality giving odds) while baseball attempted to run away from it. The NFL knew what people wanted and it gave it to them.
I was wondering why Baseball is dying. Now I know that it's because of hypocrisy.
Sport isnt dying, just the legitimacy of the HOF. Only the NFL makes more money as a single league and college baseball is gaining a ton of popularity
Missouri 14 OSU 3
Baseball isn't dying? Why, then, are they implementing all of these radical rule changes? Pitch clocks. Extra-inning baserunners. Banning of extreme shifts. Limiting mound visits and pitching changes.
In just 15 years, attendance has dropped by over 7 million per year. Other sports, on the other hand, are seeing surging attendance.
The rule changes are mostly to get more ad revenue. A 3 hour game shortened to 230 add 15 minutes of commercials and say the game is 15 minutes faster.
Attendance isnt an issue because of the game of baseball. College attendance is strong and growing, more than one college team had an average higher attendance than a MLB team. That should never happen
The cost of attending an MLB game is the issue for in person attendance. Parking is absurdly expensive, beers drinks food etc are going to be about 10 dollars each. By the time you leave youve spent close to 100 bucks if not more even with a cheap ticket.
A hot dog shouldnt cost 6 dollars, parking shouldnt be 20 or more, light beers shouldnt be 6 dollars or more making bars look cheap
Missouri 14 OSU 3
This gonna be epic.
If you believe 'ad revenue' and not 'desperation' is the cause of the rule changes, then there's not much to help you see the truth.
If your model is college baseball, then it sounds like you're in favor of cutting the regular season in half. Oh wait, what about that ad revenue you said was the sole reason for the rule changes?
Cost has nothing to do with attendance. The costs are calculated to maximize the dollars spent of everyone in attendance and no one is forcing you to buy food and drink while at the game. If you can't go three hours without stuffing your face (because to you it's too expensive) then you have bigger problems than the cost of concessions at the game.
A hot dog shouldn't be $6? Parking shouldn't be $20? Beers shouldn't be $6?
Why not? People line up to pay these prices - again, these costs aren't just thrown out there without research. I would suspect you're a free-market capitalist. Why do you want to artificially restrict prices?
Baseball is a dying sport. Want proof? Look at the difference in how the entire world followed Sosa and McGwire in 1998 compared to how it's receiving Judge and Ohtani. Judge already at 51 HR, Ohtani on pace for the first ever 50/50 campaign, and no one outside of die hard baseball fans even know, let alone care.
MLB and their gate-keeping fans are to blame. Turning their backs on the players who saved their sport and turned them into outcasts turned off an entire generation of fans, who in turned raised their kids without any interest in baseball.
Ad revenue is what is driving it and all the evidence shows it. If the game time is reduced by 30 minutes from the pitch clock then the total time to watch should;d be reduced by 30 minutes but its not. Its being reduced by 15 to 20 minutes with more commercials being put in. They was no reason other than more ads to move the pitch clock from 20 to 17 seconds. The dirty secret too is that the bases were expanded so they can charge more when ads are put on them in a couple years. They were just smart enough not to immediately do it
If you believe cost has nothing to do with attendance I really dont know what to tell you. People cant do things they cant afford. The majority of people dont have the money to go to more than a couple games a year. I dont want to artificially restrict prices, but the sport is not the problem when it decides to price people out. Its not shocking that people dont want to pay astronomical prices to go watch bad teams.
Baseball isnt even close to a dying sport. College is setting record numbers, and its flourishing around the world. MLB has three major issues. The first is that the owners have spent the last couple years telling us how the sport sucks and needs to be changed and making a ton of changes way to fast. The second is theyve priced a lot of people out of going to games.
The biggest issue by far though is just the current group of owners. Only a handful of them actually want to win and care about it. Another handful just want to be good enough to make the playoffs. The rest couldnt care less as long as theyre making boatloads of money which they all are. Theres too many As/Pirates/Tampa/Miami/White Sox/Cleveland etc owners that wont spend money and just trade 90+ percent of their good players away whenever they get expensive. They also keep their best prospects in the minors to manipulate their service time instead of having the best product on the field.
No one wants to go watch the White Sox win 40 games, or the Pirates fight for last place again (other than when Skenes pitches). Sports fans dont go to games when the product is bad and show up when the team is winning. Its not a baseball problem, its just one of the worst collective group of owners MLB has ever had and thats saying a lot. Its quite impressive considering the records college baseball has been setting for attendance and viewership as well as many foreign leagues.
And yes MLB is really bad at promoting players and has really bad social media policies. MLB and NHL sports writers are probably the worst at sitting on soap boxes and acting like theyre morally superior to everyone which certainly doesnt help. In the end that just hurts the HOF not baseball
I care far more about the service time manipulation of Skenes and Dylan Crews than whether or not the HOF exists and who some sports writers think should be in it
Missouri 14 OSU 3
I hate having to agree with BB21 here because I don’t think he’s intentionally correct here. Here’s the same information with data to back it up and minus the random owners need to spend more or there’s no small market nonsense.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/maurybrown/2023/08/17/groundbreaking-report-on-mlb-shows-baseballs-incredible-value-for-advertisers/
Bless your hart. Its truly sad what youre doing whether youre an alt or just following someone around.
There are no small market teams, the data shows it. Not sure how any owner could be random or ignoring teams that just pocket money and dont spend on players
Missouri 14 OSU 3
I rarely ever see college baseball on tv..
Terry Bradshaw was AMAZING!!
Ignore list -Basebal21
If you take all of the media revenues for all of the teams and calculate the standard deviations of each teams revenue from the mean I would argue, with reason, that teams more than a single standard deviation above the mean are large market, teams more than a single standard deviation below the mean are small market, and those in the blob are just teams.
MLB teams are setup as corporations and are not held as assets. These corporations, or rather the directors who operate them, are legally responsible to their shareholders “best interests”. This is the wording from our Supreme Court. This doesn’t necessarily mean maximizing profit, but it certainly doesn’t mean taking on debt from a majority owner to pay for payroll.
I’m not going to run away just because you’re loud and wrong about a particular issue. That in the age of the internet, with such a vast sea of information I can still find people who _ choose_ ignorance. I love it. That you also continually promote this theory that anyone who disagrees with your bizarre theories is using an alt account is another humorous element - just another thing you’re wrong about.
A lot of words being typed, but no data to back it up.
The time between innings was not changed - it's still two minutes. This verifiable fact shoots your 'ad revenue driving change' theory to bits. There are not more ads being shown - it is all in your head.
Regarding cost. I can get tickets for today's Phillies game against the Astros (Phillies have the best record in baseball, Astros leading the AL West) for $35 a pop. You don't need to pay for parking - mass transit drops you off and about a 5-minute walk gets you to the park.
You then say no one wants to pay high prices to watch bad teams. Are you saying people will pay astronomical prices to watch good teams? I just showed you can watch two of the best teams in the league for $35 a pop. Again, another nonsensical argument.
College baseball is 'flourishing' around the world? Baseball was not even in the most recent Olympics, again, another nonsense argument not based in reality. If college baseball (or even baseball as a whole) was 'flourishing around the world' it would have been in the Olympics.
Every sport has teams who tank on purpose. If a team is not good enough to make the playoffs, the best thing to do is to bottom out to maximize draft picks. That's the system in play. Don't blame teams for playing by the rules. Make MLB adopt draft rules like the NBA where draft order is not guaranteed.
You keep repeating these claims about college and foreign leagues, but you have no data whatsoever to back it up. When is college baseball ever a featured presentation, outside of the college world series? The only reason it gets any traction then is due to the doldrums of summer when its meaningless MLB games and NOTHING ELSE ON. There's no NFL. There's no NBA. There's no NHL. That's the reason people watch the college world series - there's nothing else to see.
You have, in your own convoluted way, agreed with me that baseball is dying.
Thanks!
"ad revenue" is certainly driving increased revenue for MLB teams - all MLB teams either directly, or as part of local revenue sharing.
The number of ads isn't increasing but the cost is... and that is because.... as the sport dies (every business owner wants this kind of death) viewership is up across all segments and fan attendance was back above 70M in 2023, and fan-engagement is at an all-time high for MLB. We will have to wait to see whether that holds, but I don't see anything that I would consider to indicate the sport is dying. Personally I don't care if MLB is the national past-time, niche, or anywhere in between.
Your example is 35 dollars for a ticket with I guess free public transit that most places charge for and then youre going to sit at the game and not eat or drink a single thing the entire time? Even if you just have a water and hot dog youre at almost 50 bucks for a single person ignoring cost and time of the public transit.
There is data that supports that the time it takes to watch a game is not decreasing at the same rate of the game time. Theres also tons of data about college and foreign leagues. College set attendance records last year as one example.
Baseball wasnt in the Olympics because France was the host country. They didnt want to build fields and wanted break dancing and swimmers to get sick in their river. Its back next year and who really cares anyways. Theres already the WBC which the players actually care about. Baseball and football aren't really good Olympic sports anyways
Theres far far far more college baseball on TV than just the college world series. You can even watch Japanese, South Korean and Mexican games on TV now
Missouri 14 OSU 3
Its not on the first couple weeks other than weird invitational tournaments like Ole Miss playing in a tournament against Minnesota in the Vikings Stadium. The games start getting picked up a lot as the seasons go on. SEC, ACC, Big 12 networks have a bunch of them (softball as well) the B!G network has some as well just not as much as that conference doesnt really care about baseball.
I wont pay for the + networks but you can watch basically any game you want on the + networks. Once it gets closer to conference time you start seeing some of the games moving off the conference channels to the major networks carrying a lot more of them. They would carry the big games before that time but it really picks up then
Theres been a dramatic increase in coverage over the last couple years
Missouri 14 OSU 3
I would like to see the data that shows that the duration of a game is decreasing faster than the duration of the presentation of the game.
I looked at some numbers and the assertion that game-time is decreasing slower than game-length. This left me unable to look at why this was happening - because it's not.
https://lemonly.com/work/how-baseball-game-length-changed-over-100-years
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the commercial time between 1984 and 2024 is within 3% with 2024 being longer on average. You might wonder why as the time between inning is unchanged... There are a few factors which nudge it, but the big one is pitchers per game which has increased from 2.6 to 4.2. There's more pitches per AB and fewer PH per G and some other needles move. There are a few more ads when there's a pitching change, but these are dead-air ads which don't really impact revenue so that angle is likely moot. Either way, bring forth the data!
I know the conference networks has games. But I rarely see any games on the major networks. Its not a popular sport compared to college football or basketball.
Terry Bradshaw was AMAZING!!
Ignore list -Basebal21
College football is certainly king for college sports with revenue. A growing number of baseball programs are making money though and you even have a bunch like LSU and Florida who spent over 200 million on their baseball facilities. The big programs the facilities are a lot nicer than anything in the minor leagues. Its never going to catch football having more games but its been growing quickly over the last decade. A decade ago you could really only watch the CWS and now weekday non conference games can even be seen. The conference tournaments have been getting on bigger and bigger channels the last couple years as well
Missouri 14 OSU 3
If the argument is all of the changes MLB is instituting is simply to add additional revenue via more commercials, please explain:
The commercial time outs between innings is unchanged, meaning there is no additional commercial time being added;
and, the rule change forcing pitchers to face at least three batters or get to the end of an inning means fewer pitching changes (which would have been additional commercial time).
You do not need to look at game time length to see that there is actually less commercial time now with the rule changes.
Regarding college baseball, again, the only reason their world series gets any airtime is when it's played - there is literally no competition for eyeballs.
As far as the Olympics go? It was removed from rotation in 2008. It only came back for 2021 as part of multiple sports Japan requested to be added. France has plenty of international quality fields to handle the Olympics, but again, baseball does not have this huge international draw you claim it to be.
While France has a low level pro baseball league it would have looked like baseball being played on high school fields. They didnt want to upgrade stadiums.. The Olympics time is about as bad as it can get for baseball. The pros are in the middle of the season, the draft has already happened, and most of the top college guys will say no playing in the summer leagues
If you want to ignore the growing popularity and the massive growth of college and others you can.
Missouri 14 OSU 3
Why in the world would they 'upgrade stadiums' when they already have plenty that are international-level worthy? High school fields? You don't even know what you're talking about yet here you are, spouting provably false lies.
Again, if baseball is this growing, world-wide phenomenon, why has it been excluded from every Olympics since 2008 (with the exception of 2021 when it was added as a one-off with 4 other sports)?
Face it. Baseball is an extremely regional sport that is losing fans at a record clip. Basketball was already infinitely more popular overseas and has overtaken MLB in terms of engagement and popularity.
What a dialectical delight!
France doesnt have baseball stadiums that would come anywhere close to what is needed for an Olympics. Theres high school stadiums that are better than them.
They have soccer stadiums but not every one of them has the dimensions that can happen. When the Yankees and Red Sox played in London it took over 3 weeks to get the stadium ready for it and the playing surfaces have to be entirely changed out. The major Euro soccer leagues dont allow anyone else to play on their game day surfaces.
The fact that France, Germany and Australia even have professional leagues shows the growth of the game. The Australian league even gets some minor league MLB players but they have limits on foreign players in the league
The Olympics arent the threshold of the popularity of a sport anyways. The WBC is what the best players actually care about and even that doesnt get the all of the best that could be there.
Theres nothing regional about a sport wildly popular in the Western Hemisphere and Asia. Africa and the Middle East baseball still struggles with but it is growing in Europe, Soccer will always be king there though
Missouri 14 OSU 3
You continue to push this narrative about France supposedly lacking the facilities to host Olympic baseball. That simply isn't true, and even a cursory search would prove you wrong. There have been more Summer Olympics held in history without baseball than with, and it has nothing to do with facilities (or lack thereof). No, there are not high school baseball stadiums better, either.
Again, they do not need to alter soccer stadiums to fit in baseball games - they already have the facilities to host international competitions.
The numbers are the numbers - baseball is a dying sport, no matter how much you rail against it, its best days are long behind it.
I want to see pictures of the french stadiums... I'm betting they are shaped like croissants. I didn't know much about stadiums in france so I asked someone I know who lives in Paris... That said, I have a feeling this train has more track...
Youre hyper focusing on the Olympics, they dont matter, they never have for baseball and almost certainly never will. Its not a sport where you can shut down the season for 3 weeks in August to go have an Olympics.
If you dont like the rule changes thats one thing, I dont like a lot of the MLB rule changes either. Everything points to baseball growing and flourishing and the Olympics dont matter one bit. Baseball already has its own Olympics. You arent going to know who any of the players are when it comes back next time, it will be minor league guys at best
Missouri 14 OSU 3